Drug Use Trajectories Among Minority Youth

LeShawndra N. Price is a Health Scientist Administrator in the Office for Research on Disparities and Global Mental Health at the National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In her position, she manages research and research training programs and makes research policy recommendations that focus on assuring increased emphasis on the mental health needs of women, racial and ethnically diverse, rural, and underrepresented and underserved populations both within and outside of the United States. She also leads efforts to diversify the research workforce domestically and globally. She is also a Project Scientist for an initiative designed to improve treatment and expand access to mental health care in more than 20 low- and middle-income countries, including Brazil, Chile, Peru, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, India, and Pakistan. Prior to this position, Dr. Price served as a Health Scientist Administrator at the National Institute on Drug Abuse where she managed federal grant funding related to health disparities, and family processes and early risk for drug use. She also previously served as Chief of both the Disruptive Behavior Program and the Stress and Trauma Program at the National Institute of Mental Health. She earned her Ph.D. and Master's degrees in developmental psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Psychology with Honors, cum laude from Wake Forest University. tes of Health (NIH). She currently has faculty and research appointments at Howard University and at the Miller School of Medicine, xxvii University of Miami. She worked at Howard University as an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and adjunct Associate Professor of Research and a Senior Research Fellow with the Center for Minority Health Services Research (CMHSR) within the College of Pharmacy at Howard University and at the Miller School of Medicine as a Voluntary Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences. Dr. Thomas is a social epidemiologist, with training in epidemiology, medical sociology, and demography. Her primary research and publications have focused on the social epidemiology of drug abuse and HIV/AIDS and the link with geography and geographic methods. At the National Institute on Drug Abuse, she lead the development of the Institute's research focus on the social epidemiology of drug abuse and HIV/AIDS and the role of the social environment. At the NIH, she led a trans-NIH workgroup on the mapping of the social environment as it relates to the social determinants of health, and developed and stimulated a portfolio of science broadly focused on social epidemiology, genetic liability, and phenotypic heterogeneity, and human development across the life course.